From the News (Huffington Post): “Food stamp enrollment is expected to fall by 1 million next year thanks to harsher rules, according to a new report by a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank. …

“After this year, states will have to reimpose requirements that able-bodied childless adults enroll in job training or work 20 hours per week if they want more than three months of food stamps. …

“‘The loss of benefits will likely increase hardship for these 1 million unemployed Americans who rely upon SNAP to meet their basic nutritional needs,’ Bolen wrote on the CBPP’s website. ‘With Congress unlikely to act, states need to begin planning for the reduction to ensure that clients and the many organizations and SNAP stakeholders that work with them are aware of the upcoming change and its effects.’

(Wisconsin State Journal): “Nearly 15,000 people lost access to food stamps in the first three months of a new law that requires some recipients to seek employment, new state data show. …

“The 2013-15 [Wisconsin] state budget created a rule for some recipients of the state’s food stamp program known as FoodShare: If you’re an able-bodied adult without children living at home, you must work at least 80 hours a month or look for work to stay in the program.

“That rule went into effect in April, and between July and September, about 25 percent of the 60,000 recipients eligible to work were dropped from the program when the penalty took effect, according to DHS data. …

“DHS responded on Nov. 17 saying based on anecdotal information from U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal food stamp program, roughly 60 percent of eligible recipients lost access to food stamps under rules similar to Wisconsin’s, and 10 to 30 percent found jobs.

My Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us in the “The Last Generation” by Baal HaSulam how to build a society that resembles nature in which everyone works as much as needed in order to provide the basic necessities for himself and for society, and everything is divided in a relatively equal manner between everyone, and all the extra free time is dedicated to educating humanity and teaching the method of resembling nature.[174909]

Comment: The chairman of the opposition Itzhak Hertzog demands the complete separation of Israel from the Palestinians: “I want to separate from as many Palestinians as possible as soon as possible,” he asserted in a speech he gave at a convention in the INSS in Tel Aviv, “They are there and we are here; let’s build a big wall between us.”

Hertzog presented a new plan in which he suggests building a fence around the big Arab settlements declaring that “only the separation between them and us will guarantee a Jewish majority in the state of Israel. Only the separation between us and them will prevent the penetration of terrorists and increase our sense of security.”

Answer: I don’t think this will prevent the penetration of terrorists since there is actually no barrier against terrorists and no border can be absolutely sealed.

My belief based on the wisdom of Kabbalah is that we should actually focus on unity between us that will draw all the nations of the world to unite around us! And first and foremost the people who are closest to us historically, mentally, and linguistically because Arabic is very close to Hebrew.

Therefore, we should change our attitude toward Arabs in Israel and the surrounding countries. Our teacher, the great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam, Rav Yehuda Leib Ashlag, wrote about it.

Personally I regard such expressions about the issue very carefully and doubt whether they have any practical meaning at all.[176763]From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/8/16

Question: Is it possible to discover the Creator without studying according to a method with a teacher and books?

Answer: It is possible, but this is very difficult. There have historically been Kabbalists who attained serious and high states without study.

One of the cases was a person who attained the upper world when he was in a Soviet concentration camp. He began to write in Hebrew there even though he didn’t know the language at all. It is considered that the book was written in a high language that nobody speaks and nobody understands.

I showed his book to my teacher Rabash and he said that this was a very high spiritual attainment, but it is individual like the Book of Psalms by King David.

I was amazed at how a person who doesn’t know the language could write something like this. Rabash answered that it was specifically the great suffering that he went through, which revealed the upper world to him, and he expressed his feelings in writing.

It is necessary to understand that we exist in the upper world, but we lack the desire for it whereas for him, there was a breakthrough into the upper world. There was an additional case of a person who also sat in the prison cell of a concentration camp, and from tremendous longing and great suffering he began to feel the upper world, although not clearly. But he felt as if everything enveloped and held him. This is a normal first feeling of the upper world, and that is what he described in a book.

When he reached Israel sometime later, we met, but all of his spiritual sensations had disappeared. It could be that if he had remained in a camp, he would have reached a greater attainment. Since this didn’t happen, he will live this life without physical suffering. But he had an illumination there and the opportunity to discover the upper world specifically from a state of suffering.

Comment: There are many people who suffer and don’t receive an illumination like this.

Answer: It depends on from what they are suffering. If a person suffers because he is searching for the meaning of life, this could end with the revelation of some kind of illumination. We are found in an ocean of Upper Light, but we don’t have a strong desire for it. When the desire appears in a person, he has some kind of vigilance and he makes an effort so he will feel a higher illumination.

Question: If a person receives illumination through suffering, does this mean that we were created to suffer?

Answer: No, a person is born to discover eternity, the infinite, perfection, and harmony. Suffering is not the right way to attain the upper world, and if this happens, then the contact with the upper world is temporary because the person doesn’t develop permanent desires for spirituality. I don’t suggest considering the example that I gave because a temporary illumination like this comes in moments of very great disappointment and despair when a person sees absolute darkness in front of him.

This is called the “illumination of Malchut,” an abyss that is not a void, not anything except coldness; instead, it is a state in which all substance seems to freeze in him. That is, the person has moved to the beginning of the creation of the universe.

This is possible because all of us are moving in a timeless dimension. States like these can be experienced when the ego disappears, but they don’t give anything. In moments of intense suffering, a person can feel some kind of detachment from his ego because suffering pushes him toward it.

His entire being is suffering and he wants to leap out of his body, apparently to stop existing. In a state like this he can feel a little detachment, but even though this is a state of antimatter, it is far from being spiritual.

If you want to achieve conscious fulfillment from the higher force correctly and rapidly, it is possible only through connection with friends according to the correct Kabbalistic method. All the other ways are incorrect.[176505]From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

New Life #514 – A System of Forces
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

There is a lot of information in the place we exist. As we develop, we communicate with this database, with everything that touches upon a link with the forces. This is an area in which there are many questions. It is an area that is completely unruly.Kabbalah makes it possible for a person to build five additional spiritual senses (soul). With them he feels beyond this world.

Everything that I feel, I absorb with my “desire to receive.” I have the ability to open the desire to bestow to expand my perception. Through the desire to bestow and the five new senses that work outside and not inside, I feel a higher world. This perception doesn’t depend on my body, so I will sense an eternal, unlimited, and whole life.

The person then begins to see a round world, that everything is linked to everything. He begins to move toward connection. The spiritual world is the system of connection between us, the connecting link between everyone. It creates a new attitude toward life in him.

In the links between us, a stream of information about everything is found, about giving, about love, about links of mutual guarantee (Arvut) . The information streams between us all the time, between our desires.

The entire creation can be summed up as a desire for pleasure. A person who can restrict his desire to receive and wants to bestow, goes out to a network and he sees others who have the characteristic of bestowal in it. Like a flower that was closed and opens, he sees from one end of the world to the other, feels everything and understands everything.

The first tip on the way to opening your “flower” is – open your heart![153314]From KabTV’s “New Life #514 – A System of Forces,” 1/29/15